What if all life on an alien planet was one giant superorganism? A team of scientists claims the arrangement might actually be the norm. They’ve dubbed the concept “Gaia as Solaris” — and it could mean that working together as one, alien life survives in more places than expected.
The term “Gaia” refers to the Gaia hypothesis, named after the ancient Greek goddess of Earth. The concept, developed by British chemist James Lovelock and U.S. biologist Lynn Margulis, suggests that Earth and the life on it behave as a single entity. More specifically, living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth in a way that promotes life overall.
Milan Ćirković, an astrobiologist at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and senior author of the study, and his colleagues now suggest the ways in which evolution could unfold on alien worlds might lead to a form of life very unlike any on Earth. Instead, they suggest one possibility is a version of Gaia on overdrive, like the scenario depicted in famed sci-fi novel Solaris. The scientists detailed their findings in a preprint study accepted in the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres in January.
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